In hopes of bringing solar energy to the masses, the Citizens Utility Board and Environmental Defense Fund on Tuesday announced a proposal to allow Illinois neighborhoods to invest in solar projects together and share in the compensation credits that result from the energy savings.

Alarmed by the rapid pace of climate change, a key federal science panel is urging a major research effort into high-tech schemes that could cool the planet if prevention fails, potentially including giant machines to suck greenhouse gases from the air,...

After a massive coal ash spill coated the Dan River in North Carolina with 70 miles of toxic gunk a year ago, state lawmakers required coal ash stored at four Duke Energy plants in North Carolina to be moved to safer locations.
Now tons of coal ash...

Fearing an oil spill in Cuban waters, U.S. officials have forged a bond with the Castro regime to preserve the threatened marine ecosystem that connects the island nation to the Florida coast.
The U.S.-Cuba agreement to move toward normal relations...

HARRISBURG — Fulfilling a campaign pledge, Gov. Tom Wolf on Thursday signed an order Thursday banning new drilling leases on public land, ending a short-lived effort by his Republican predecessor to expand the extraction of natural gas from rock...

HARRISBURG —Gov. Tom Wolf plans to sign an executive order ending a short-lived effort by his predecessor to expand the extraction of natural gas from rock buried deep below Pennsylvania's state parks and forests, his office said Wednesday.
Following through on a campaign pledge, Wolf will sign the order restoring a moratorium on new drilling leases involving public lands on Thursday at Benjamin Rush State Park in northeast Philadelphia.
It will supersede an order that Republican Gov. Tom...

For too long, carbon dioxide has dominated the discussion of greenhouse gases; for the most part, it has been the discussion. That gas, emitted by the burning of fossil fuels, is, after all, the biggie in terms of volume. But this single-minded approach has meant that the so-called short-lived gases have been all but overlooked, and that's a mistake. There might be less of them in the atmosphere, but they are powerhouses when it comes to trapping heat.
Methane, for example, is 80 times more potent at...

FBI agents are asking questions about an environmental bill carried by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) in 2013 after The Times reported on controversy surrounding the measure, a source familiar with the inquiry said Tuesday.
The source, who was interviewed by the FBI, said agents asked basic factual questions about SB 37 during a visit in Sacramento last week but did not give any indication that they had evidence of any wrongdoing. An FBI representative reached late Tuesday did...

International negotiators in Peru agreed early Sunday on some essential building blocks for a global accord to address climate change, most notably an unprecedented agreement that all countries commit to cutting heat-trapping emissions.
But the contentious marathon discussions convened by the United Nations left so many issues undecided or watered down that many participants cautioned that time might run out to craft a pact over the next year that would deliver the emissions cuts needed to avert the...

This winter, Yurok tribe forestry crews will be four-wheeling down muddy fire roads, hiking through steep, slippery brush and trekking across more than 20,000 acres of forest to count and measure trees.
Instead of preparing to sell lumber, as it has in the past, the state's largest Indian tribe is taking stock of its firs, redwoods and tanoaks to make money in California's cap-and-trade program.
By managing its forest near Redwood National Park for carbon storage instead of timber harvest, the tribe...

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court on Wednesday upheld the state Legislature's right to use the royalties from oil and gas production on state forest lands for general state budget purposes, but it found that the state's conservation department — not the governor — has the ultimate authority for making the decision to lease.
In a nearly unanimous decision, the court held that the General Assembly acted within its constitutional authority when it gave itself the power to...